Textbook Pictures into Reality

This is one of those weird little posts that had never actually occurred to me to write and then something came up and metaphorically smacked me right in the face and so I knew right then and there I had to write about it.

So here it is: 

Bear with me, ok? 

Until I married Steve, I had never really thought of myself as the traveling "type". My parents weren't really big travelers and our family vacations mostly centered around visiting family (who all lived relatively close to home, I might add). So other than a trip to Disney World the Spring after I turned 4, we really didn't do much traveling. Looking back on it now, traveling was never really something I ever considered, but I guess as the old saying goes, "You can't miss what you don't have..."

In the 1st or 2nd grade, I can distinctly remember reading a short story in my Language Arts book about a little dog in Pompeii just before Mt. Vesuvius. It was a fictional story, of coarse, but at the end of the story there were really photos of Pompeii and I remember being FASCINATED with it. And I can remember hearing about the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia on the news and thinking that place was as far away from me as the moon.

When my (much loved and wonderfully awesome) cousins Frank and Joyce came this summer for a visit and we rode in a gondola in Venice, I understood perfectly the tears in their eyes and wonder in their voice when they said repeatedly to us, "I never thought I'd see this".  I get that. And I think it everyday. 

Steve, on the other had, grew up in a family who did do a lot of traveling. His father worked civil service for the Air Force and they spent a great deal of time living overseas. As a child, Steve went to places I didn't even know to dream of. He talks of listening to the 1985 Iron Bowl on a friend's car radio while skiing the Alps in Switzerland and he has a shoebox of communist momentos he picked up on a school trip in 1987 to the then USSR. I remember flipping through family photo albums of his and seeing pictures of Steve in front of places I had only read about. My personal favorite is one of him looking bored and miserable posed in front of The David in Florence, a typical teenager of the 1980's--rock t-shirt, Walkman (tape not CD), zit faced, braces, and oh-so-lovely mullet haircut. (Steve, not David)

Steve caught the travel bug early in life and when the time was right, he wanted to share that opportunity with our kids. 

So here we are today, in Greece--our 11th country we visited in 2013, the 3rd in just the month of December alone. Yep. We caught that bug. 

Which brings us to that smack in the face part of the story I mentioned a million words ago at the beginning of what has turned into a long-winded post. 

We were boarding the plane in Athens today to fly home to Greece and I was walking down the jetway and I happened to look up and see this advertisement on the wall:

Bravo, MasterCard. My sentiments exactly. 

We've gotten to see so many awesome places in the 2 years we've lived here. And I'm so thankful to have memories to go along with those schoolbook picture. 

Home & Family

I grew up in a tiny little town in Virginia that probably wouldn't be considered tiny anymore, yet is still small enough that my oldest daughter had my 1st grade teacher as her 1st grade teacher, and that I taught 8th grade English there with my 8th grade English teacher.  In my opinion, this makes it small enough.  I loved growing up in small town, surrounded by history and people I had know my entire life.  And then I married a military man and moved far, far away and I thought all of that would change--that my own kids would never have that sense of "home" that I have now come to cherish.  It's so true.  Ask any military kid where they are from and they'll do one of three things:

*They'll tell you where they were born (Trey does this.  He says he is from Texas--a state that he was born in and actually lived in for exactly 3 1/2 months before we moved to Virginia, and he spent almost the entire time in the NICU.  And I cannot tell you how many kids I've taught over the years who say they are from Germany)

*They'll tell you where their parents are from, even if they've never lived there themselves (Tory does this.  She frequently tells people she is from Virginia, or sometimes Alabama)

*They'll tell you where they moved from last (Jackson does this. He's from Ft. Campbell, by the way--a place that is super confusing since it actually straddles the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.  We lived on the Tennessee side, by the way)

I frequently wonder if Delilah will say she's from Italy, since it's where she's lived for the greatest amount of time.  Even now, when we ask her if she's an American or if she's Italian, she always says she's Italian. I blame that on the gelato.  And the pizza. 

But here's what I've come to realize over 20 years as a military spouse:  Home really is where you make it.  It doesn't mater in what city, state, or even country that happens to be in.  And you build your own history with your military family that you're lucky to know and call your friends.  They become your family and in a sense, your history.  I'm so thankful to have this opportunity. 

Steve and the brats.  Yes, the Roman soldier came with the house...